


Cheval

by secace



Category: Arthurian Literature - Fandom, Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Genre: Curses, Deal With It, Gen, Trans Character, gawain is a horse girl, hes the best character, that stupid son of a bitch sword in particular, uhhh what else, yeah its a gringolet centric fanfiction what about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25273807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secace/pseuds/secace
Summary: “Gawain is my name,” he announced, brash and angry and painfully young. “And I'll be taking your horse, Sir.”
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	Cheval

**Author's Note:**

> this is for rey gawain-in-green's arthuriana bingo challenge! 
> 
> also i got three hours of sleep and did not beta this at all xoxo enjoy jmfdhsgreaewf
> 
> also its gen but only if you are Not Looking (heterosexual)

The creatures slid in and out of the sea as if through mist, half-real. Equine ghosts, pale as the moon, with blood-red faces. The children of Queen Morgause were warned away, like all children, told to keep far off the beaches when they were out in the surf.

The eldest Lot begat, the nurse said, was born without fear. Or, as would come to be seen, did not know it yet. They would be old friends, before the end.

But now it was a stranger, and the child perched among the black, salt slick rocks and watched the horses in the water. They were aware, of course, of the small interloper, despite all attempts at stealth. They made no move to predation. Perhaps they had some admiration, for the wiry fierceness in the tiny animal, the sharp eyes hidden behind long wind-tangled brown hair, the easy grip of a knife in one hand. Youthful clumsiness beginning to give way to catlike grace. Posed like the child was a hunter, too.

Perhaps they weren't hungry.

The creatures had swam in the waters around the Orkney islands for as long as there were islands, and waters. But all things change. Against all odds, one found itself fettered, brought to a far off land. It served several masters, mystic and mundane, none of which lived long. Anger seethed in it, poisoned those who rode it.

The child, too, was fettered in a far off land when they met again. And a child still, despite the adult role worn, heavy on small shoulders. The wild hair, now cut short, sharp eyes and fierce blade, belonged to a name now. A name chosen by it's bearer. A name held close, shared recklessly.  _ I am here! Remember me! I am-- _

“Gawain is my name,” he announced, brash and angry and painfully young. “And I'll be taking your horse, Sir.” 

For whatever could be said, he had the skill to back up his mouth. The last in a long line of owners fell under the red sun glaring down with divine fury on a dying man with bloody spurs and worse habits. 

This done, the boiling rage sunk into a simmer. Gawain approached, cautiously. The mortal form wasn’t fooling him, the full red coat not enough like sheep's clothing. 

The horse was still, curious, waiting as the young man reached his flank. Unexpectedly, Gawain began to untack him, movements measured and deliberate. 

“Is it possible,” he asked aloud, as the bit landed heavily in the torn-up grass, “for you to return to the sea, now that you've left it?”

The horse did not answer. It did not speak this tongue. 

“I didn’t think so.” Bridle followed, fine red-dyed leather woven with gold, on the ground. “Do you have a name?”

The child was persistent. But the human form was lost. 

“Everyone should have one. I can give one to you, if you swear to ride with me. There'll be opportunities to hurt people, if that helps.”

No answer.

“Fine, alright, trample me to death if the answer is no.”

He meant it, too. There are other less kind words for ‘reckless’. The horse did nothing as the saddle was lifted off its back. 

“Wonderful. Look forward to working with you.” Gawain studied him. “Gringolet.”

Gringolet huffed.

“It's a nice name! Every name should start with ‘G’.” He asserted confidently. Gringolet was unimpressed. “Alright well, we made a deal so it’s too late. I’m fetching my saddle.”

Ah. It was too much to hope for that  _ that _ would be done with. To his credit, Gawain forewent spurs and kept a light touch on the reins.

On this new steed, Gawain rode to rejoin an army, led by the man who currently held his leash. This man was Gawain’s uncle, and fancied himself a great king. Gringolet did not pay heed to him, except in a vague instinctive dislike. Out of courtesy, when Gringolet snapped at the first stable hand that tried to touch him, he didn’t take the boy's hand. But Gawain saw to the creature himself, after that.

The child would come in fine court clothes, or old riding leathers, to the stables, where Gringolet was housed with several stalls empty between himself and the animals, which was foolish, he had no complaints with them, only their riders.

Sometimes Gawain brought another with him, who would lurk nervously by the door. Gawain gave this person a name, too, which was Gaheris. Gaheris was a brother, which was, he learned, the most important category of person. There were Brothers-- to be protected and trusted no matter what-- and Other People, who were nothing and no one. Despite this, Gawain liked people. Gringolet did not.

People caused a lot of trouble. Gawain told him this, leaning forward to speak in his ear over the howling wind, cold hands tangled in the dark mane that objected to any attempts at combing. Court was a web of secret alliances and unspoken rules, and a constant fight to be the spider, and not the fly. 

From the whiteness of his knuckles and tremor in his voice, he had failed. He would fail again, the creature knew, and again and again. The promise of it was thick in the air, in the earth, in the very blood that ran through his ill-fated veins. 

The temperature was dropping, and they had been riding for a long time, fighting off wolves and monsters and men, and hunger and cold and hopelessness. It would be kinder, to the world and to the boy, if he should freeze to death tonight. A sad and curious footnote in the story of some other great man, and the bond would be broken.

Gawain was speaking, had been for a while, words falling from his lips like the heavy clumps of snow that he was too tired to brush off his cloak. Murmured half nonsense, requiems for a life he hadn’t before wanted and would lose far too early, spoken in desperate whispers to the only confessor he had. There wasn’t much time left, as what little strength and warmth were left in him slipped away and his whispers grew quieter.

And later, his host would say knowingly, that Gawain was lucky to have such an intelligent horse, to find the castle in the middle of a bitter snowstorm, across such a vast wilderness. And Gawain would be too distracted by the warmth of the fire and the cup in his hands to wonder.

The next several days, Gringolet was in a stable. He bit the stablehands, kicked the door to splinters, destroyed everything in reach that could be destroyed. There was a power here far stronger than his, and he could do nothing more. After three long days, he was led out, by the lady of the castle herself, because none of the hands would dare touch him, though they were no more mortal than he was. 

“I am sorry,” Gawain said to him, when the castle was beginning to shrink behind them. “That a creature like you should be-- be tied by obligation to someone who amounts to nothing.” He paused a moment, took a breath of bitterly cold and clear air. “I have critically misstepped-- I-- I took something. I think I will die for it.”

It was said numbly, statement of fact. He had so little left, nothing but the hope that he might go bravely. 

_ It is only a cruel game they are playing with you, _ the creature might have said, but the human form was lost. So he raised his head up high and nobly, red coat radiant in the early morning light, and carried him to the chapel as proudly as he could.

Gringolet was left outside. That is the hardship of such a form. But he could feel when one year passed to the next, the cycle fed with given blood. It came without a release from his oath-- not yet-- so he waited. 

Gawain fled the green chapel, one hand on the back of his neck and the red blood that trickled from it, the other a shaking white fist at his side, snow next to the evergreen of the Belt. He wasn’t triumphant. 

“I’m alive,” he said quietly, wistfully, as they set off for a home they hadn’t thought to return to. 

There was nothing for Gringolet to do but ride on, so he did.

“Yesterday that was all I wanted. Now I-- I don’t know whether to be relieved or not. I’m so-- stupid,” unexpectedly, his voice broke, and there was a tug of fingers in Gringolet’s mane, and, as the sun rose to melt the frost on the ground, gasping sobs. At first, Gringolet continued, putting more distance between them and the chapel. But it is sometimes the way that one cannot mourn something without grieving everything else, all the tragedies and resentments and melancholies of nineteen years, of which he’d more than he was entitled to. 

The completely uncharacteristic hysterics continued unabated, and with something between pity and exasperation, Gringolet stopped. Long legs folding like the wings of a great water bird as he sat heavily in the snow, so that the poor little pest needn't fear falling. Not that he was sensible to that, slipping awkwardly out of the saddle and into the white blanket of snow, arms still wrapped around Gringolet’s neck and sobbing into his mane. 

That morning was warm for winter, the frozen strings of diamonds which hung from the trees dripped down as the fierce sun rose and turned the snow to uncomfortable slush. As it did, muffled cries turned to shaking silence. They settled in it, for a while, no sounds but the dripping of melting ice and bird calls.

The sun reached its zenith, and Gringolet rose, nudging the boy gently.  _ Get up. If you don’t now you never will. Get up. _ It took a few tries, before grudgingly Gawain stood, and they continued on. Gawain did not weep again.

. As they rode into Camelot his fingers brushed the belt at his waist, hesitantly, like it might come alive, a verdigris serpent, to kill him. 

A curious thing happened. When they returned, it was to cheers, where the harsh set of Gawain's shoulders had predicted shame. Now, when Gawain came to the stables, the boys would scatter into the corners like mice and peer out, wonder in their eyes. Now there was a great to do whenever Gawain rode out, even if it was only for the morning. People cheered loudly in tournaments and whispered when he passed in the courtyard.

The man had changed, too. The pride was less defensive rashness, more quiet grace, and the anger it covered was tempered, too, into a patient and hidden thing, not often invoked, terrible when it was. The man he was now knew the power in how he was seen, wasn’t above using it.

Where previously he’d given his name heedlessly, to anyone who would listen, now he used it like a weapon, carefully withheld and granted and timed, because it meant something now, to be Gawain. 

Around this time two other people who were Brothers arrived. One smiled frequently, spoke quietly. The other never smiled and spoke only to criticise. Both burned with bitter resentment that Gawain pretended not to see. When the first rode out, they followed. The second did not ride out, except in the dead of night, and came back only to sideways glances and poorly concealed chuckling. This one's name was Agravaine, and Gringolet did not see him very often.

The other was Owain, whom he saw frequently, for Gawain would often accompany him, sometimes by request and sometimes not.

“Owain!” His cousin said, standing from where he’d been on the scuffed stable floor in front of Gringolet’s stall. “You’re going to find the fountain?”

Owain, having just entered, said something to the effect that yes, he was. Perhaps sensing his sour mood, Gawain pushed on all the courtesy he could summon, a heightened differentiality usually only used for older women that scared him. Of course this only made things worse, but it was his first instinct. 

“I’m sorry, are you angry with me? Please ignore Kay, he doesn’t mean anything, really, no one thinks--”

“Please-- please don’t. Just let me leave.”

It was easy to sense the nervous tension in both of them. How much neither wanted a confrontation, and panicked to feel themselves hurtling towards one anyway. 

“I’m not stopping you,” Gawain insisted, a statement at odds with the fact he’d stalked across the stables to stand in front of the stall Owain meant to open. “You honestly can’t  _ stand _ my company?” 

Owain ignored this, brushed past Gawain to open the stall door and lead his horse out, clearly pleading that his cousin leave well enough alone for once. But discontent ran deep, and was bubbling to the surface tonight. 

“Owain--”

Now he turned, dropped the reins. “You really can’t let me have anything. Not a single thing to myself? Haven’t you won enough praise for a lifetime?”

So that was it. The hidden misery Gawain couldn’t politely ignore away. “I’m not trying to compete with you.”

Owain looked like he wanted to yell, sneer, say all the worst things kept in guilty corners of his heart, but he wasn’t the sort to be capable of that without hurting himself worse, so he simply frowned. “No, you wouldn’t. I’m so far below you, how could I begin to-- I’m not even playing the same game. You won’t even give me the honour of letting me lose to you.”

For a moment, Gawain said nothing, did nothing but stand there and look slightly sick. “I’m sorry.”

Owain shrugged, anger spent. “It’s not really your fault.” He turned back to his horse, grabbed the reins. “I’ll be back, I hope.”

This time, Gawain didn’t say anything, except, “good luck,” when Owain finally did leave, and he still hadn’t moved. The slam of the wide double doors had ceased its echoing, settling heavily and gradually in the rafters and thick beams above them, nestled with the rats up there, when Gawain stood with a start.

He threw open the door to Gringolet’s stall with hapless intention. Gringolet tried a flat stare to dissuade him, to no avail, and let himself be led out. Waited till Gawain had gone to the trouble of throwing on a saddle and bags and et cetera, before he made his opinion known.

Gawain took several steps toward the door, noticed the lack of hoofbeats, turned quizzically. Gringolet stood perfectly still. “I am not in the mood for this right now.”

He caught the reins and gave a testing tug, meeting the resistance of solid steel. Feeling increasingly silly, he tried again to no results. “Look, I’m not going after him, obviously, that would be-- impolitic. I just thought to go for a ride. Clear my head?”

_ Liar.  _ Gringolet still refused to move.

“I wouldn’t lie to you.”

_ Yes, you would. _

Maybe the embarrassing impotence of the moment hit him all at once, but as suddenly as he did anything Gawain dropped the reins and looked down. “Fine. I’d only be making it worse, I know. There’s no winning.”

He began untacking Gringolet, movements slow and clumsy as if he was suddenly exhausted. “I suppose I should thank you for saving me the embarrassment.” 

Of course, that was his devoir. Gringolet huffed, and Gawain laughed weakly. 

Years wore on. Gringolet saved the knight from lions, dragons, snowstorms, heat, wolves and robbers and challengers and drowning, three times. Always creeping to the water’s edge, always, inevitably, going under.

Yet, there was no way to save Gawain from the troubles he brought on himself when they were separated. And there were a great number of those. The machinations of court and of love, the web he’d learned to weave around himself, a shield and a cage. 

Often Gawain would march into the stable with some new business he’d entangled himself in. Fetch this, kill him, rescue them, look around the bordered and see-- mostly innocent. Sometimes they would ride out late at night and return early in the morning, bloody and grim. 

These events came as interruptions to the usual cycle of years; business at court, tournaments, wars, quests, and looking for Lancelot. Lancelot was not in any of the categories of person, and this, Gringolet thought, was upsetting. He wasn’t an enemy, he wasn’t by any means a Brother, but he also wasn’t Other People. 

They seemed to spend a great deal of time looking for him to no clear result upon having found him, other than establishing his location and occasionally saving him from bleeding out in the middle of nowhere. Gringolet did not like Lancelot, and chose to forget that he came to aim Gawain just as often as the opposite occurred. And Lancelot was, in every conceivable way, not Gawain, perhaps his greatest offence. He cried very often for no discernable reason, spoke awkwardly and infrequently, with odd and unpredictable movements that made him deadly in a fight and a disaster everywhere else. He hummed tunelessly and smiled rarely.

None of these were reasons to dislike him. Gawain certainly liked him, and his opinion could usually be relied upon. But other than an indelible sense of dread, Gringolet had no real reason for his enmity, so they must be created. He found the root of dislike, years down the line, when Lancelot appeared with The Sword.

They were looking for Lancelot again. Gawain had stormed into the stable a week before, doing barely more than throw a saddle on before mounting. The tack was mostly for show anyway. All Gringolet needed was a vague direction, or a target, and he needed no more managing, would have no more, actually. He never failed, and this was not an exception. 

Lancelot was sitting with his eyes closed, under a tree with The Sword a naked blade across his lap. It was a pleasant morning, the last of the dew a fine mist on the hills, the breeze a lackadaisical muttering and rustling in the new green leaves. There was blood in the air with it, long enough out from it’s spilling to be cold and sticky. 

Grass and clumps of dirt were kicked up under his hooves, as Gringolet reared, pulled against the reins, resisted any attempt at control in favour of getting Gawain as far away from that blade as could be affected. Not bothering to fight him, Gawain slipped out of the saddle, cursing, and landed with a roll to avoid heavy hooves. 

The blade was clean. There was old blood on the blade, some unfortunate robber, some unfortunate farmer, Lancelot. There was warm blood on the blade, Gawain. Something old and hungry looked out at him from the red designs on the hilt, forming eyes and teeth and tongues and thin grasping fingers. 

_ Get rid of it, get rid of it, run far far away from this sword and its wielder _ , he tried to speak, darting in front of Gawain to block his progress, and never before had he regretted so bitterly that the other form was lost. To put a bridle, and a saddle, and a bit, on a creature is to make it that which wears them. And that meant he could be ignored.

Gawain was not in the mind to heed him, the wicked speed of his enough to slip around and out of any attempt to corral him, and soon he was off the rough path and into the knee high grass. Gawain stopped several paces off. He wasn’t a fool. He said something, a name, likely, that couldn’t be heard. The wind whipped it away to distant countries, and the only sound was rustling grass and the screaming of ghosts that hadn’t yet been made, promising this would end in blood. 

There was a second, like sound was moving slower than the laws of nature dictated, and it took a spell to reach Lancelot. But he glanced up, then, and blessedly made no other movement, his scarred hands still loose on the hilt of the blade. Gawain spoke again, and slowly, laconically, received a response. It was long minutes of patient and stilted diplomacy, moving closer through gentle negotiation till they were sitting across from one another. 

The holy men who told Gawain he was wicked were right, but they would not have said it if they’d seen him here. Would not have said it, because of how he reached out to place his hand, hesitant but steady, on Lancelot’s around the deep red hilt, despite the blood it was viscid and stained with. Only then, that he had lost some control over the blade, did Lancelot look up from it, and was seemingly startled into tears by the simple sight of the field and the sky and the road beyond, stretching out through rolling hills-- and of Gawain, who leaned forward gingerly to kiss his cheek. 

Some small comfort was the best he could offer, the closest he could get, because still there was The Sword, an open blade between them. 

Many years after the people in this story were nothing but bones, the truth of them forgotten, half rate poets and dissembling chronographers would say The Sword was cursed, that to touch it was to doom oneself. That destiny had written Gawain’s epitaph when he tried to draw it from the stone under the orders of his uncle. If the act of touching the sword could doom a man, it was here, in the pleasant early morning with no one to see but the two creatures most loyal to him, that Gawain promised himself to die on that blade. 

Then again, anyone who knew him would say Gawain would always find an end like that one.

They camped in that field overnight, and left for Camelot the next morning, arriving, by design, after dark, in a place that was quieter than before. Emptier and older and tired and soon to be undone. Like many things in that state, it limped along for a while, in something not unsimilar to normality. 

Men died quietly and publicly in the shadows and in front of cheering crowds. Lancelot won tournaments, Gawain looked for Lancelot, and attended to important matters inside small rooms, and tried to teach the unknown young men who came to court and watched fewer and fewer come back. 

One day, Gawain argued with his brothers. That was what he said, relating the incident half to himself as he sometimes did, while doing the usually drudgery of seeing Gringolet taken care of. Maybe in a better world, if Gawain was a better, luckier person, that would have been the end of things.

It is hard to guess the events occurring within a castle when one resides in it’s stables alone. Often the most that could be ascertained was that something, indeed, was happening. There was shouting late at night, and bells ringing through the night. The next morning there were messengers sent out, and Gawain was away. 

He learned no more till the afternoon, when a man he had not seen in a long while took out his tack and saddle. The man was Gawain, truly angry. He talked of cutting ties, of armies and allies and calling bluffs and favours and he was afraid. The effect of anger he drew around himself like a mantle, worn just often enough for it to be spoken of, felt never, truly. In honesty, he was brash and calculating and protective and heartbroken and afraid, and cruel sometimes, but he wasn’t angry.

They met a lady on the road who wasn’t human, and she told them to turn around. 

Resistance was incomprehensible. Gringolet carried him up to the gates, unnatural speed towards something unknown that neither wanted to reach. No grooms or squires came to take the discarded reins, or lead him into the courtyard behind Gawain when he passed over the threshold. 

All things come in threes, three minutes passed and three things were lost, and the bond was broken. The bond was broken, and Gawain’s voice was still in the air, his voice and the scent of blood and smoke. A man who did not deserve a name begged him to be calm, stop screaming, preternatural hearing caught a sword being drawn. Then nothing. 

Gringolet stood for a long time, and a few hours later, a terrified squire approached him, and was allowed to lead him to his stall in the stables.

Three days of waiting, before Gawain came to him. Not angry. Calm, almost, still and pale and exact as a mechanism. His voice was low and even and empty, and there was no redness around his eyes, only dark circles. 

Gawain opened the wide doors to the stable and then the door to the stall, led him out into that open space, all wordlessly except to direct the stableboys away. They would scamper into corners like little mice and report to each other that Sir Gawain was angry. He wasn’t angry.

“Leave. Go home, if you have one still.” 

Gringolet stared at him quizzically. It was an odd thing, that the promise had been kept, but the man stood before him whole. The Sword had made no marks on him, he was whole and breathing and his heart was beating. 

He hadn’t come to argue. Face still even, he asked for bridle, reins, saddle and tack and, when they had been delivered, drew a slim knife and systematically cut them to unusable scraps of leather and fine thread and unconnected buckles.

Then, he left without another word. 

Not waiting for the stableboys to chase him out, Gringolet left, unburdened. Wandering, mostly, from field to fen. He saw the armies march south, and headed to the sea instead, where he haunted the sea shore. Occasionally he glimpsed things in the waves that would not welcome him back, that he was no longer alike to. 

Gringolet did not sense the moment it was truly over. The bond was already broken. There was a gradual fading, and a destination. He crossed a lake, and came upon the scene of a great battle, bodies still rotting together under the sun, and undulating black mass of carrion birds which settled among them. Some he recognized. He travelled on.

It was The Sword, finally, that he felt, that could be followed, that led him to the tomb, and the man who kept a vigil there. Perhaps, if the other form had not been lost, they might have spoken together there. It was lost, and this was a human place, so Gringolet did not linger.

A lifetime ago, he had met a child on a lonely hill in a far away land. He went to that place now, and there he waited. This was not a creature which could die, but it was also not a creature who would ever stop waiting.

  
  



End file.
